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Lately I've been spending a lot of time playing the security games like the ones at http://www.hackquest.de.
I've learned a good bit about web security from them, but I have to wonder if I'm not taking the long way around to learning about security in general
I want to get your opinion on whether these sorts of things are useful, or just waste time that could otherwise be spent on other methods of learning
If you learned something then it was useful, but beating a few challenges on that site does not make you a "hacker". Nothing can replace reading books and learning things for yourself.
I've been to some of those sites and most of them are just a bunch of goons asking you for the passwords to the next level.
You know what I am going to agree with Breakology and disagree at the sametime, alot of the hacking site out there all you find is a bunch of Neophytes asking for the password to a certain level, which by definition of the word hacker is the complete opposite. Now I will say that the best way to learn anything IMHO is to jump into, you can read as many books as you want. You still will not understanad how Perpetually ping someone with a 4000 size packet. Unless you play around with the command a couple times.
No as for Learning from them completely yeah Break your right, youv'e got to hit the books. There is no other way around it, there are a lot of things that you can learn by doing, but there are some things that can only be explained by reading.
I personnally think that a bit of both should have you, at a pretty nice area.
Jizz